A window into the pub office

Main menu

About Charlie Megenity

Charlie Megenity (formerly Gorney) is a senior double majoring in political science and economics. He previously served TKS as managing editor and as co-news editor while working as the weekend reporter for The Galesburg Register-Mail. Over the summer of 2012, Charlie interned in Wisconsin with Patch.com, an online hyperlocal news source, where he covered the August 2012 Oak Creek Sikh temple shooting; he will return to Patch during the summer of 2013. He is also the journalism editor for Catch magazine.. Charlie has received three awards from the Illinois College Press Association for newswriting and design, including a first place award for front page layout. He was the 2013 recipient of the Theodore Hazen Kimble Memorial Award in Journalism for a feature story published in The Knox Student. His work has also appeared in The Huffington Post.

The award was announced Saturday during the SPJ Region 5 conference in Chicago. TKS was judged regionally against other non-daily student newspapers — regardless of school size — with three random issues from the 2013 calendar year.

This is huge news for TKS, especially coming off a strong showing at the Illinois College Press Association conference in February. And while these recognitions are always welcome, we still want to know how we can serve our readers better. Story suggestions can be submitted here, emailed to tks@knox.edu, or sent directly to me at cgorney@knox.edu.

Before he worked at the Tribune, Phillips was a drama critic for the Los Angeles Times, among other publications. He was the co-host of the TV show “At the Movies” for its final season, after several years filling in for Roger Ebert while Ebert was on medical leave. Phillips was also a three-time Pulitzer drama juror.

On Friday, Phillips will have an open lecture titled “Why Go to the Movies?” — during which he will examine the question: Why go out to the movies when your smartphone and your laptop are singing a duet called “Let’s Stay In Again”?

This visit is sponsored by TKS, Film Club, the Cultural Events Committee and the Knox College Journalism Program, along with additional funding from Student Senate.

This calls for congratulations to the story’s co-authors: Matt McKinney, former enterprise editor who is now pursuing his master’s degree in at Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism, and Kate Mishkin, a current co-mosaic editor. Their reporting on Galesburg residents who had been banned from campus deserves the high praise.

You’ve probably noticed by now that my byline has changed in TKS. Well, there’s a simple explanation.

Here’s the note I ran in the Discourse section this week explaining the change:

Most of you probably know me as Charlie Gorney. Don’t worry, it’s still me.

No, the supposed editor-in-chief was not replaced by someone else named Charlie. And no, I did not wake up one morning and realize that I had been living my life with the wrong name.

When my wife (who you may know as Erin Besaw) and I got married over the summer, we decided to take on a new last name. While we have yet to go through the legal name change process, I decided to change my byline in TKS to avoid any mid-year confusion.

I hope everyone is getting a good start to the term. I know TKS certainly is.

For those of you who are wondering about the new name, it’s Erin’s grandmother’s maiden name.

I, along with Digital Editor Chelsea Embree and Copy Editor Gabrielle Rajerison, are in town to cover the speech. We’ll all be pretty active on Twitter, so follow our main account @theknoxstudent, I’ll be at @Charlie_Gorney, and you can find Chelsea and Gabby at @chelseeandsay and @likeserendipity, respectively.

Feel free to tweet us your questions and observations about the speech.

The speech

Though the exact contents of the speech have not been publicized, we do know the general topic: The Economy. President Obama plans to lay out his economic ideas that will invariably influence his economic policy plans for the rest of his presidency.

If we’re going by the self-reported data, Knox is a pretty liberal campus. I’d say it’s hard to dispute that, though we do have political organizations spanning a wide range of the political spectrum. But as I found out in recent weeks, we can’t discount the possibility of connections to the other side of the aisle.

Knox likes to tout its connection to President Barack Obama. He gave a commencement speech here, and he holds an honorary doctorate (just like Stephen Colbert). But earlier this term, what I thought was the election story of the year fell right into my lap — and at first, it seemed to me entirely antithetical to our conception of Knox.

I was perusing the Knox website, looking over the profiles of our trustees, when I stopped at one of the life trustees (a former trustee given an honorary title, much like Roger Taylor is now president emeritus) — Patrick Graham, class of 1962. His profile is rather unassuming; there was no photo and a brief description. But here’s the part that caught my eye: co-founder and former director of Bain & Company. The precursor to Mitt Romney’s Bain Capital. Yeah, that one.

So I did some digging and called him up. Turns out that Graham was a Galesburg native, and not only did he help to start Bain & Company — he personally recruited Romney to the consulting firm and later pushed today’s GOP nominee toward political life.

Before I did my reporting, I was in something of a state of shock. To my knowledge, “Bain” was a scummy word associated with questionable business practices and “shipping jobs overseas.” But then I did the reporting. And then the Knox connection made more sense.

It turns out that when Graham and Bill Bain went to set up their consulting firm, they aimed for a more ethical business model, and they felt they had the brains to be just as successful as the Boston Consulting Group, the well-established firm they left. Most telling was Graham’s explanation of what he learned at Knox: learning how to question predominant assumptions.

This is now my third year with TKS. I started as a reporter, moved up to news editor last year, and this year I’ve stepped into the managing editor position. And each year, as people come to associate me with the newspaper, I’ve heard more often that dreaded cry from a friend or acquaintance – generally someone we can call a ‘public figure’ on campus.

It goes something like this.

‘Oh, I shouldn’t be saying this in front of you. Now it’s going to be in the TKS next week.’

Well, not quite.

Sure, the reporter in me always has what I like to call the ‘story antennas’ up at all times, and Anna and I ask that TKS staffers do the same. We prefer to base our coverage on what students are talking about or what they’d like to learn more about – not just on official proceedings or scheduled events. But don’t take that the wrong way.

The story antennas should not be mistaken for a 24/7 mental voice recorder, always prepped to grab a sound byte. Essentially, my personal and professional policy on the matter states that it’s off the record unless otherwise stated or assumed in an interview setting. While I may want to pursue a story based on some thoughts I’ve gleaned from a casual conversation, by no means was that conversation on the record.

So remember that I, along with other TKS staffers, may be journalists at heart, but we’re Knox students before we’re TheKnox Student. Don’t stray away from casual discourse for fear of being quoted, because I’ll make myself damn clear if I’m looking for a quote.

P.S. I can hear Anna’s cry of joy as I post this. I used to be a blogophobe, but I have since come around. Thanks for reading the Editors’ Blog, everyone.